Bioarchaeological Studies of Life in the Age of Agriculture

Investigations of skeletal remains from key archaeological sites reveal new data and offer insights on prehistoric life and health in the Southeast.

The shift from foraging to farming had important health consequences for prehistoric peoples, but variations in health existed

within communities that had made this transition. This new collection draws on the rich bioarchaeological record of the Southeastern United States to explore variability in health and behavior within the age of agriculture. It offers new perspectives on human adaptation to various geographic and cultural landscapes across the entire Southeast, from Texas to Virginia, and presents new data from both classic and little-known sites.

The contributors question the reliance on simple cause-and-effect relationships in human health and behavior by addressing such key bioarchaeological issues as disease history and epidemiology, dietary composition and sufficiency, workload stress, patterns of violence, mortuary practices, and biological consequences of European contact. They also advance our understanding of agriculture by showing that uses of maize were more varied than has been previously supposed.

Representing some of the best work being done today by physical anthropologists, this volume provides new insights into human adaptation for both archaeologists and osteologists. It attests to the heterogeneous character of Southeastern societies during the late prehistoric and early historic periods while effectively detailing the many factors that have shaped biocultural evolution.

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction

This edited volume had its origins in a symposium of the same
name organized for the 65th Annual Meeting of the American
Association of Physical Anthropologists in Durham, North Carolina.
The purpose of the symposium was to move a step beyond studies emphasizing
the health consequences of the shift from foraging to farming...

2. Ancient Diseases, Modern Perspectives: Treponematosis and Tuberculosis in the Age of Agriculture

Major changes in patterns of Native American mortality, health,
and disease accompanied the gradual transition from the Archaic
hunter-gatherer lifeway, prevalent before 3,000 years B.P. throughout
the Eastern Woodlands, to the sedentary agriculturally dependent late
prehistoric lifeway described by the first Europeans to enter the Southeast...

3. Warfare-Related Trauma in the Late Prehistory of Alabama

The widespread extent of warfare or raiding in native societies in
North America has been known for many years. Besides historic
accounts, skeletal remains have yielded ample evidence of the frequency
of indigenous warfare. These accounts include numerous examples
of death caused by arrows or spearpoints and cases of perimortem
mutilation, such as decapitation, dismemberment of limbs,...

4. Transitions at Moundville: A Question of Collapse

The site of Moundville in west-central Alabama is the archaeological
remnant of a prehistoric political and ceremonial center that
oversaw a regional population of several thousand people between ca.
A.D. 1000 and 1500 (Peebles 1987a). At its peak, Moundville was one
of the largest such centers in the Southeast and covered about 100...

The research presented here traces changes in patterns of diet and
health stress from the Mississippian period into the historic period
in Alabama using a model that compares published data on dental
health at the prehistoric Moundville site (ca. A.D. 1050 to 1550) to new
research on dental health at early contact period Fusihatchee Town (ca....

6. Agricultural Melodies and Alternative Harmonies in Florida and Georgia

Late prehistoric cultural development in eastern North America is
often characterized by the emergence of nonegalitarian societies organized
into hierarchical political formations and associated with increased
reliance on horticultural products, specifically maize (Griffin
1985; Peebles and Kus 1977; B. D. Smith 1987, 1990, 1992). Archaeological...

7. Inferring Iron-De

Anemia is a condition present when an individual’s hemoglobin
or red blood cell amount—as measured by count or volume—is
below normal. This is problematic because the body is less able to
transport oxygen to the tissues. There are various types of anemias,
but most fall into one of two groups: genetic hemolytic (abnormal hemoglobin...

8. A Comparison of Degenerative Joint Disease between Upland and Coastal Prehistoric Agriculturalists from Georgia

One of the fundamental components of bioarchaeological research
is the use of pathological skeletal lesions in the study of the interaction
between biological and cultural aspects of past populations
(Blakely 1977; Buikstra 1977; Buikstra and Cook 1980; Bush and Zvelebil
1991; Grauer 1995; Iscan and Kennedy 1989; Larsen 1987; Larsen and...

9. Dental Health and Late Woodland Subsistence in Coastal North Carolina

The North Carolina coastal plain is a region that has not yet been
researched extensively by bioarchaeologists. Although many of the
human burials have been analyzed by physical anthropologists, primarily
from Wake Forest University, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, and East Carolina University, little synthesis of the results...

10. Life on the Periphery: Health in Farming Communities of Interior North Carolina and Virginia

Unlike regions such as the Black Warrior Valley of Alabama described
earlier in this volume, North Carolina and Virginia are
located on the periphery of the Mississippian cultural sphere. Consequently,
this mid-Atlantic region never experienced the same degree of
political centralization and population aggregation that characterized...

Virginia’s best-known prehistoric archaeological excavation took
place over 200 years ago, when Thomas Jefferson explored and described
a burial mound on his property (Jefferson 1954). Jefferson’s
work continues to be widely cited as the first example of a careful
and problem-oriented excavation strategy in American archaeology...

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